Jocelyn Samuels, Vice President for Education and Employment

Jocelyn Samuels was Vice President for Education and Employment. She focused on barriers to the advancement of women and girls at school and in the workplace. Prior to joining NWLC, Ms. Samuels was Labor Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and she also worked for a decade as a senior policy attorney at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where she specialized in issues of sex and race discrimination. Ms. Samuels is confident that with the help of Title IX and a little athletic talent, she could have been a star in a wholly different realm of courts.

by Jocelyn Samuels, Vice President for Education and EmploymentNational Women's Law Center

I have exciting news!

This Thursday, Lilly Ledbetter -- the Alabama woman who was paid less than her male co-workers for nearly two decades -- will be standing alongside Congressional leaders, and supporters like you, to rally in support of the bill that bears her name, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

by Jocelyn Samuels, Vice President for Education and EmploymentNational Women’s Law Center

Forty-five years ago today, the Equal Pay Act made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform equal work.

You might think that 45 years would be enough time for a law to have lived up to its potential. But the wage gap persists — women still make, on average, only 77 cents on every dollar earned by men, and women of color fare even worse.

And how can we explain the persistence of discrimination? One significant reason is that the anti-discrimination laws have been weakened in ways that prevent them from serving the purposes Congress intended. Under Title VII, for example, the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. decision makes it virtually impossible for women — or any employees, for that matter — to get into court to challenge pay discrimination against them. And courts have steadily undermined the Equal Pay Act to create gaping holes in the fabric of protections it was intended to provide.